英语六级与考研英语仔细阅读语篇难度对比——来自语料库的证据

A Comparison of Text Difficulty Levels of Intensive Reading Tasks between CET-6 and NETEM—Evidence from Corpus-Based Data

摘要: 本文采用语料库方法对近年来大学英语六级、考研英语(一)、考研英语(二)的仔细阅读语篇难度进行了比较。研究收集了近年来三种考试的共计144篇仔细阅读文本，然后从词汇复杂度、句法复杂度、易读性和主题覆盖四个方面分别进行了分析，以考察三种考试仔细阅读语篇难度上是否有差异以及有怎样的差异。研究发现：总体而言，英语六级与考研英语(一)阅读语篇难度基本一致，且明显大于考研英语(二)；英语六级阅读选材比考研英语更加广泛，对考生非语言知识储备要求更高。本研究对大学生英语学习和备考六级或考研英语具有参考意义。

Abstract: This paper reports on a corpus-based comparative study of the text difficulty levels of intensive reading tasks between College English Test Band 6 (CET-6) and two versions of National Entrance Test of English for MA/MS Candidates (NETEM-1 and NETEM-2) in recent years. A total of 144 texts of the three kinds of examinations in recent years were collected, and then analyzed from four aspects: lexical complexity, syntactic complexity, readability and thematic range to investigate whether and to what extent intensive reading texts of the three exams differ in text difficulty levels. It is found that there is a close resemblance between CET-6 and NETEM-1 on the whole in terms of text difficulty levels, and that both are significantly more difficult than NETEM-2. Besides, the reading texts of CET-6 cover a larger thematic range compared to that of both NETEM-1 and NETEM-2, which means that CET-6 requires more extra-linguistic knowledge of examinees than the other two do. This study can be of certain significance in that it might, hopefully, provide reference for college students in English learning and preparation for CET-6 or NETEM.